The Screws in My Handrail Keep Coming Loose. What Gives?

Every time I tighten or redrive the mounting screws on our handrail, it always comes loose again. What am I doing wrong?—CLAUDE Y., HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA

Once a part works loose, creating an airspace between it and its mounting surface, the looseness acts as a force multiplier. You tighten it and it loosens even more. The cycle repeats until the part comes completely undone or breaks. The moral? Tighten something as soon as it comes loose, otherwise it will only get worse. When tightening, check if the threads are stripped, if anything was over- or undertightened, or if the wrong size or type of fastener was used. There's almost always a good reason that tight things become loose.

The first thing to do in your repair is ensure that the mounting screws for the brackets are hitting solid lumber. Make a test run with a 1/16-inch drill bit to confirm that the screws aren't just catching the edge of the stud. Next, try using a longer screw of the same diameter so it fits through the existing mounting hole but reaches a fresh part of the stud. You may be tempted to try to fix the stripped-out hole by inserting a piece of copper wire or a glue-covered golf tee, but this is not the place to do it. You need to reach solid lumber. If that doesn't work, you'll need a thicker and larger mounting bracket. You might even sneak in one structural screw (a hybrid fastener, somewhere between a lag screw and a wood screw) at each bracket location. Even if you have to slightly drill out the screw-mounting hole to accept the structural screw, it'd be worth it to fix this problem for good.

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